Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities
Attainment Automation for Looked After Children and Care Leaver case management systems to address monitoring, tracking and reporting requirements.
The CLA Live Web Application – SaaS is currently in use by Newham Virtual School and Barking and Dagenham Virtual School. It has proven itself to be successful as a specialist tool to track and monitor EET, manage the integrated preparation of Education Plans with key professionals around the child as well delivering at a click of a button, in-built key analytical reports in response to Central Government and Senior Managers’ requirements
We have now completed Proof of Concept for the automation of attainment into the system and initial testing of a small dataset.
LBN has now successfully worked with two of the main Suppliers who support Virtual Schools to delivery an automated weekly update of Attendance and Exclusion both in display and report as an additional capability within the CLA Live Application.
We now seek Alpha funding to complete the automated integration of current progress, Exam and Test results into the LAC child records from schools and colleges nationally.
This would remove much of the burden of inputting this data and free up Officers’ time to work with the children, carers, Social Workers, Educational Psychologists etc.
The funding would be used to review the Proof of Concept, modelling of secure transfer to the CLA Live application, review initial coding, work with key Suppliers on changes existing the e-PEP Attainment section to deliver data with the required format.
We will develop required changes to existing SFTP transfer protocols and process with 3rd Party Suppliers (LBN and LBBD). We will then test e-PEP forms to send e-test data. Following successfully outcomes to testing, we will apply process to third LA as further final of testing – (Havering).
Please see attached PDF information sheet which illustrates achievement to date against Statutory Requirement for Looked After Children and Care Leavers.
Local Authorities have statutory responsibilities placed upon them by Central Government, to ensure that vulnerable children in particular Children Looked After, receive appropriate intervention to enable them to realise their potential in education, training and employment (EET).
Local Authorities have Statutory responsibility to create a Virtual Schools to advocate, track and monitor of outcomes of Looked After Children and Care Leavers.
For instance, every child of school age should have a current Personal Education Plan which should be reviewed ideally every 3 months and updated every 6 months.
Looked After Children can be placed anywhere in the country and may be moved multiple times to meet safeguarding needs. Yet every young person from 3 – 25 whether currently or formerly in the Local Authority needs to have their educational and employment journey supported by specialist within the Local Authority Virtual Schools. This often means small specialist with large caseloads.
A customised system is necessary which is able to cope with the combination of education, employment and training concerns with safeguarding and live case work.
This application also frames educational needs within the context of wellbeing factors as Looked after children often carry a history of trauma which impacts on educational performance.
We have User Requirements workshop, weekly feedback sheet, email and phone help desk, training and briefing sessions with LBN and LBBD Virtual School officers.
Over the 10 years of development in the heat of operational delivery on a daily basis Officers use the application and tells NVS Staff directly what works, what does not requirement and indicate additional requirements. Our development is informed by regular research and updates making use of Statutory Guidance on Education and Safeguarding.
The current version of CLA Live is now Release 8. Please see attached User Consultation Notes.
| It costs on average £167 per day for the Education, Training and Employment specialist Officer time. Users currently use CLA Live system for about 50% of time to manage their caseload and significant portion of time is spent seeking, collating and inputting attainment data.
In addition Virtual School Managers have regular reporting responsibilities. Through this development of CLA Live Application, reporting requests and the preparation of reports becomes a pooled operation and Application supports the sharing of intelligence. Final costing would be calculated from research and consultation with each LA Partner to arrive at figure.
The costs and benefits of potential Beta would be arrived at from lessons learnt at the Alpha stage, consultation with existing partners (technical and business), consultation with lead organisation such NCER, lead 3rd Party Suppliers and with close guidance from MHCLG.
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Partners are currently engaged CLIVE Virtual Heads Group Meeting which meets termly. Annually, a review. Update meeting for LBN and LBN officers for consultation and briefing on new developments. In addition there are regular ICT collaborative meetings where business and technical representatives can join by Skype Business to discuss progress and explore issues.
Governance – Service Level Agreement are already in place through the Licence Agreement with LBBD which covers responsibilities, process and management of disputes. A Project Brief outlining milestones and responsibilities to report on progress on.
| We have already attracted the interest of other Local Authority partnerships such Barking and Dagenham, Waltham Forest and Havering Virtual School. However, this solution needs to be scaled up and made available at accessible Licence to a wider group of authorities. To date Newham Virtual School has borne the cost of development but recent constraints on budget makes the long term development uncertain. We would welcome support and guidance about how to deliver the larger vision of a shared solution and shared intelligence. We would re-iterate that every local authority has a responsibility to its Looked After and former eligible young people to support their realisation of their potential. The CLA Live web Application – SaaS is about support efficient discharge of that responsibility. |